Why did the Apostles Write Down Their Oral Traditions?

The intense and frantic drive to write down what Jesus had done and taught has fascinated me beyond bounds. Why would those disciples grab a pen so quickly to record the actions and teachings of Jesus? Admittedly, after Jesus left, the disciples perpetrated one of the most pivotal periods in religious history. Why?

Without the historical context, however, a reliable and accurate account of their motives will elude us. This topic is to important to tolerate conjecture.

Their Primary Motivation

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Considering the fact that they claimed to be eyewitnesses to Jesus’ teachings, miracles, and resurrection, their message motivated (forced?) them to preserve an accurate account of Jesus' life and teachings. They wanted to ensure that future generations had a reliable record. This was a time of oral traditions, but they knew that written texts would withstand the test of time and changes in oral narratives.

Speed of Growth of Believers

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And persecution of the "christians," intended to destroy this aberrant Jewish sect, ignited it beyond anybody's wildest imagination. When you kill people, other people become fearful and stop associating with those dead people and what they believed.

Unless, of course, what they believed was beyond any thing humanity had ever encountered. Like God adding humanity to His deity, living as a perfect person in this cesspool world for thirty three years, intentionally dying on a Roman cross to pay for all of humanity's sins, then rising from the dead to prove that everything he said was true. And what happens to the apostles after they died? Jesus promised all his followers eternal, not temporary or just another reincarnation, but eternal life with Jesus in the next life.

Since this life is seriously temporary and the next one eternal, we can understand people dying for that. Even if they have been deceived, they seem to have more peace going through this temporary hell hole than those who were killing them.

And if Christianity was going to spread that quickly, then people who had not personally witnessed what the apostles had witnessed needed to be informed as accurately as possible.

The increasing number of converts throughout the different regions needed a consistent and accurate message. Written accounts provided a standard for teaching and avoided misinterpretation caused by faulty oral accounts.

Death of First Hand Witnesses

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It's understandable why the apostles like Peter, John, and later, Paul felt a deep sense of responsibility. Their divine mission to disseminate Jesus' teachings became their last will and testament. And they knew they were going to die soon. The loss of firsthand witnesses would not be tragic. They wrote it all down. And they instructed the believers to make copies, lots of copies. Not like the Jewish scribes copying the Old Testament manuscripts. They didn't have the time to be so meticulous. Christianity was spreading so fast and so far, that the disciples needed to copy a text as accurately as possible the first time around. Someone was waiting at the door to send it by carrier pigeon to a village in Turkey.

Translations, eventually

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And everybody likes to read things in their own language. Written texts could be shared more effectively than oral accounts, and eventually, they could be translated into other languages.

Providing a factual and thorough evidence-based account was crucial. The apostles knew that the truth of Jesus’ life and message would have a powerful impact and it needed to be documented meticulously.

Driving Force: The Holy Spirit

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The New Testament also states that the apostles were also driven by the Holy Spirit in their writings. They claimed that they had not imagined what they had witnessed, nor concocted their writings for personal gain or notoriety. And begin noticed would only bring down the wrath of the Jews and Romans onto their head.

Since I've never had that experience, it is difficult to imagine how that driving force worked inside the apostles. Peter wrote in his second letter 1:20-21, "Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." "Moved" in Greek simply means "carried or helped along." A unique experience to be "guided" as to what to write down. And if the Holy Spirit was their guide, using each writer's own vocabulary, they would have not been allowed to make any mistakes.

More Than Just Information

The disciples soon recognized another benefit for the written text. When persecution and hardship increases, a written text is more comforting that a verbal message. Whether Jewish or Gentile (a conglomerate of Egyptian, Asian, Greek, Roman and a few from further away), people from different cultural backgrounds and languages were coming to faith in Jesus.

Changes in society and the world constantly demonstrate that the world always functions in the realm of relative truth. No unified beliefs between cultures and nations. Right and wrong, good and bad determined by the power mongers within each generation. Wars and unrest with no end in sight. Stability is just a word with no reality.

The apostles had witnessed Absolute Truth in Jesus. The world was wrong, and the written record of what Jesus had done and taught could provide stability and continuity amidst change for those who wanted God's solution.

Bible on Fire

Each writer focused on what he saw as the need of the day. Matthew, Luke, Mark and John started the journey with the life of Jesus, but after the resurrection, Luke was driven to research and write down the immediate spread of Christianity in the Book of Acts. During that time, each writer realized that the believers needed more than the Gospels. Each believer and each local church needed specific instructions on how to live out their lives as followers of Jesus. Therefore, each "letter," or "epistle," spoke to specific issues needed, depending on the audience. It became immediately clear that followers of Jesus are not perfect, and they needed direct guidance in a totally new universe. The rules had changed. They no longer needed to follow and obey the Old Testament Law that had come from Moses, but now their new freedom required that they use that freedom for the benefit of others. Every human being is selfish. Believers needed a written text to guide them away from what Paul called the "world's way of thinking" toward the radical lifestyle of Jesus. And since humans don't do well remembering verbal instructions, the apostles wrote it all down.

Pass the Message On

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Luke recorded that statement from Jesus that the disciples would "receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth.” This wasn't a command. It simply told them what they were going to do. Each writer might not have been consciously aware that writing down his oral messages would impact more and more people, but it did. Paul certainly understood how his letters were being used to reach more people with the message of Jesus. In Ephesians 6:19, he even asked that the believers in Ephesus pray that God would give him more boldness in knowing how to communicate the message on his travels.

Although the apostles did not retreat into the mountains or deserts as monks to write their texts, we don't know how much collaboration took place among them. If the Holy Spirit was guiding them, they probably didn't need it.

Heresies

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All religions have their opponents. Most opponents are other humans from other religions. However, if the message of the apostles is true, and especially what Paul wrote in Ephesians about the demonic world's attack on Jesus and His church, then an immediate and much more powerful push back and violent rejection could be expected. And not just in the physical realm of persecution, like Stephen being stoned in Acts 7.

And these attacks needed to be countered in written form, so that believers outside of Jerusalem know what was true and what was false about Jesus and his kingdom.

In his first letter, 1st John, the apostle John attacked the first major heresy that Jesus had never been a real human being. This heresy taught that Jesus was either a figment of one's imagination or some kind of undefinable celestial substance. The implication was devastating to the teachings of Jesus. His human death on the cross paid for the sins of the world. If He wasn't human, then his sufferings had never happened.

John did not approach this heresy with the delicacy of a theologian. He viciously attacked it as demonic.

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world" --I John 4:1-3.

Transformed Lives

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It would be equally difficult to miss the fact of how many lives had been transformed by Jesus when he was on the earth. He healed thousands, and the apostles needed to write down at least some of those transformations. Having experienced almost three years of watching people change, right before their eyes, impacted them in ways that changed them, as well. John started out as a "son of thunder," i.e., a man who loved to fight, but he ended up writing one of the most powerful books on love ever written. Read John 13-17. Peter began his career as a big mouth, but eventually wrote some very convicting verses on humility in 1 Peter 5.

And then John tells us that the apostles were only directed to write about a "few" of those miracles. In John 21:25, "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written one after the other, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

If John is correct about the vast number of miracles Jesus performed, then we have been given only the tip of the iceberg. Apparently, the Holy Spirit felt that this tip was enough evidence to an open-minded person to discover what Jesus did, taught, and who He was in reality.

Children

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The Jews had taken the words of Moses seriously when he wrote in Deuteronomy 4:9-10, that God was mandating parents to pass along what they had experienced to their children.

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

And when Jesus, in Mark 10:14-16, became indignant at the disciples and reprimanded them for pushing children away, they realized that He fully agreed with Moses. They had read the Old Testament to their children. They needed a written New Testament to do the same. The children needed written texts for their education.

Jesus' Return

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When Jesus took the disciples up to the top of a mountain in Acts 1, they asked him if he was going to set up his kingdom at that time. He declined to answer that question, but those disciples always believed that He would someday do so, and after He left, they continued to believe that He would return "soon." The fact that He had more planned than they had anticipated didn't soften their looking to the future for Jesus to return and set things right. The problem was that Jesus had promised to come in judgment the next time. And if He had the power to perform thousands of miracles, raise the dead and raise himself from the dead, then no force in the universe could stop the devastating punishments He had promised those who rejected Him.

The apostles realized how important written text were for the purpose of informing the world outside of Jerusalem of God's coming judgment. And nobody knew when it was coming. Being ready for His return became a common theme in their writings.

Some probably felt that it would be tragic if people in other lands had never heard of Jesus coming the first time when He showed up the second time.

The Apostle's Attachment to Jesus

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If I had lived during the time of Jesus, and if He had chosen me as one of this twelve disciples, and I had witnessed His power and love for the weak and hatred for evil, I would have fallen in love with Him more than I could have ever loved another human being. And I would have been partially devastated when He left without taking me with Him immediately. More all the other reasons combined, I would have written down as much as possible to remind myself of Him for as long as I still lived on this earth. I think the apostles had the same motive for writing things down. I think they were thrilled that the Holy Spirit helped them get their writings perfect.

Future Believers

Paul finally realized that Jesus might not return during his lifetime, and that he might be martyred for his faith. He began to address the point of passing along the message for future generations. He eventually recognized that building Jesus' "church" wouldn't happen over a weekend, and those future believers needed a written text for all of the reasons already listed.

The Total Package

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In sum, the apostles couldn't help themselves. Too many forces drove them to write it all down. The need for a reliable record, so many new converts from so many cultures, death of first hand witnesses, needed translations, the Holy Spirit driving and guiding them, comfort during persecution, the absolute necessity of absolute truth, Jesus' command to pass the message on, fighting heresies, transformed lives, education of children, Jesus' return, the deep attachment of the apostles to Jesus, future believers.

The only apostle who hadn't cared was Judah. Even his suicide, written down in detail, taught believers the need for sincere faith.

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